Brahms and the Shaping of Time

Overview

Overview

Combines fresh approaches to the life and music of the beloved nineteenth-century composer with the latest and most significant ways of thinking about rhythm, meter, and musical time.

Brahms and the Shaping of Time brings together essays by leading music scholars, each of which analyzes the music of Brahms with a particular focus on the music's temporality. The volume reveals numerous ways in which Brahms manipulates such basic elements as rhythm and phrase structure, in pieces ranging from the Third Piano Sonata and the Double Concerto to a number of his most important and beloved songs.

The first two essays examine aspects of rhythm and meter in Brahms's lieder, recognizing his meaningful deviations from temporal norms. The second two pick up the mantle from William Rothstein's landmark text Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music. Rothstein's study focused on the music of other composers, but suggested how a future study might explore the music of Brahms; these essays contribute to such a study while also pivoting the book's focus from vocal to instrumental music. Each of the chapters of the third pair cross-examines and expands our understanding of the hemiola. The concluding trio of essays promotes, through further analysis of individual works, ways of hearing that encourage the reader to breach the confines of the score's metric notation.

Together, the essays in this volume offer fresh approaches to the life and music of the beloved nineteenth-century composer and incorporate significant new ways of thinking about rhythm, meter, and musical time.

Related Titles

Table of Contents

Foreword: Brahms, Analysis, and TimeExpressive Declamation in the Songs of Johannes BrahmsTemporal Disruptions and Shifting Levels of Discourse in Brahms's LiederPhrase Rhythm and the Expression of Longing in Brahms's "Gestillte Sehnsucht," Op. 91, No. 1On the Oddness of Brahms's Five-Measure PhrasesHemiola as Agent of Metric Resolution in the Music of BrahmsBrahms at Twenty: Hemiolic Varietals and Metric Malleability in an Early SonataContainment and Wave: Temporal Experiment in Brahms's Opus 2Rhythmic Displacement in the Fugue of Brahms's Handel Variations: The Refashioning of a Traditional DeviceDurational Enharmonicism and the Opening of Brahms's "Double Concerto"